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IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems

Secrecy Outage Performance Analysis of UAV-Assisted Relay Communication Systems With Multiple Aerial and Ground Eavesdroppers

Tingnan Bao, Haiming Wang, Wenjing Wang, Hong‐Chuan Yang, Mazen O. Hasna

Published Nov 30, 2021• 26 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In this article, we study the secrecy performance of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted relay communication system, where a ground base station (GBS) intends to send confidential information to the ground legitimate user Bob with the help of a UAV relay in the presence of multiple aerial and ground eavesdroppers. We consider the height-dependent probabilistic line-of-sight and the general$\kappa$-$\mu$shadowed channel fading model in the system. To enhance the secrecy performance, the GBS and UAV relay apply directional beamforming transmission while implementing protection zones around their intended receiving destinations. We then derive the approximate closed-form expressions of the secrecy outage probability (SOP) under different aerial and ground eavesdropperscolluding strategies. To get insights, we also obtain the SOP expression over Rayleigh fading as a special case. After discussing the impacts of transmitting and multiple aerial and ground eavesdropping parameters on the SOP, we show that the optimal altitude of UAV relay exists with the minimal SOP value under different urban environments. We also show that UAV eavesdroppers have a larger effect on the system performance than ground eavesdroppers.

DOI
10.1109/taes.2021.3131631

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In this article, we study the secrecy performance of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted relay communication system, where a ground base station (GBS) intends to send confidential information to the ground legitimate user Bob with the help of a UAV relay in the presence of multiple aerial and ground eavesdroppers. We consider the height-dependent probabilistic line-of-sight and the generalκ\kappaκ-μ\muμshadowed channel fading model in the system. To enhance the secrecy performance, the GBS and UAV relay apply directional beamforming transmission while implementing protection zones around their intended receiving destinations. We then derive the approximate closed-form expressions of the secrecy outage probability (SOP) under different aerial and ground eavesdropperscolluding strategies. To get insights, we also obtain the SOP expression over Rayleigh fading as a special case. After discussing the impacts of transmitting and multiple aerial and ground eavesdropping parameters on the SOP, we show that the optimal altitude of UAV relay exists with the minimal SOP value under different urban environments. We also show that UAV eavesdroppers have a larger effect on the system performance than ground eavesdroppers.
In this paper, we study an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted relaying communication system, where a ground base station (GBS) intends to send information to a legitimate ground user (Bob) with the help of a UAV relay, in the presence of a passive ground eavesdropper (Eve). In particular, assuming an urban operating environment, we analyze and derive the closed-form approximation of the intercept probability and the ergodic secrecy rate. Through analytical and numerical results, we examine the effect of different system parameters on secrecy performance.
In this letter, we study the secure information transmission from a ground base station (GBS) to a legitimate unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) user, in the presence of multiple UAV eavesdroppers. To enhance the secrecy performance, the GBS applies beamforming transmission while enforcing a protection zone around it. Utilizing the general κ-μ shadowed fading distribution to model the ground-to-air channel, we derive an exact expression of the secrecy outage probability (SOP). To further facilitate performance evaluation, we adopt a data-driven approach and develop a deep learning model that can predict the SOP performance with high accuracy and short computation time. Through selected numerical results, we examine the effect of different system parameters on the SOP performance.
In this study, we investigate the secrecy outage performance achieved by opportunistic relaying for a low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm secure communication system in the presence of multiple UAV-eavesdroppers. In the primary channel, multiple UAV-transmitters are connected to a ground station via the ground-to-air (G2A) wireless backhaul and a UAV-transmitter and UAV-relay are selected to transmit the source signal to a far ground destination under air-to-air and air-to-ground Nakagami-m fading links. In the eavesdropping channel, maximum ratio combining is applied across multiple UAV-eavesdroppers for intercepting the legitimate transmissions from both the selected UAV-transmitter and UAV-relay. The backhaul reliability and eavesdropping probability are introduced to reflect the practical constraints on the G2A wireless backhaul and UAV-eavesdropper cooperation, respectively. The closed-form expression for the secrecy outage probability is derived in terms of the UAV cooperation, backhaul reliability, eavesdropping probability, and Nakagami-m fading parameters. In the high signal-to-noise ratio region, the asymptotic secrecy outage probability is also derived. It is shown that the secrecy diversity gain achieved by opportunistic relaying is jointly determined by the UAV cooperation and shape factors of Nakagami-m fading links in the primary channel. The analytical secrecy outage metrics achieved by opportunistic relaying are verified by Monte Carlo simulation results.
Abstract In this research work, we study the secrecy performance of Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the vicinity of an interfering and eavesdropping UAVs. More precisely, firstly a case when the ground user communicates with the intended UAV where two unwanted UAVs operate in the vicinity, has been investigated. It is also considered that the wiretapping UAV also suffers interference from different UAV. The modelling of the UAV communication system considers the impact of small-scale fading, line-of-sight (LoS) probability, altitude and 3D coordinate of all the three involved UAVs. To this end, analytical expression has been derived for the secrecy outage probability (SOP) for the system considering simultaneous effects of eavesdropping and interference. The analysis for secrecy capacity has also been conducted to derive analytical formula. The results are extended to a case when multiple interfering and eavesdropping UAVs function to derive the expression for the SOP. Importantly, the numerical simulation of the derived results show that the effect of eavesdropper can be minimized by placing an interferer in the vicinity of the wiretap source. Moreover, the impact of power transmitted during wiretapping by the eavesdropper appears to be more compared to distance from intended UAV.
In this paper, we study the strictly positive secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the ergodic secrecy capacity of a wiretap unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system where a UAV transmitter (Alice) is trying to send a message to a ground receiver (Bob) while an eavesdropper (Eve) is attempting to eavesdrop on the legitimate communication link. We study the performance of the system in two cases, first, when Eve is on the ground and an Air-to-Ground channel model is adopted between Alice, Bob and Eve. In the second case, Eve is a UAV drone that is located at the same altitude as Alice and the channel between Alice and Eve follows an Air-to-Air channel model. We derive closed form expressions of the SOP and ergodic secrecy capacity for the two scenarios. Simulation results verify the analytical derivations, where the results highlight the importance of the derived secrecy metrics, especially the impact of the distance between Alice and Eve on the overall performance.
This paper proposes a novel cooperative secure unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) aided transmission protocol, where a source sends confidential information to a destination via an energy-constrained UAV-mounted amplify-and-forward relay in the presence of a ground eavesdropper. We adopt destination-assisted cooperative jamming as well as simultaneous wireless information and power transfer at the UAV-mounted relay to enhance physical-layer security and transmission reliability. Assuming a low-altitude UAV, we derive connection probability, secrecy outage probability, instantaneous secrecy rate, and average secrecy rate of the proposed protocol over Air-Ground channels, which are modeled as Rician fading with elevation-angel dependent parameters. Further, we analyze the asymptotic average secrecy rate performance of the proposed UAV-relaying scheme and derive high signal-to-noise ratio measures of the average secrecy rate to highlight the effect of various channel features on the system performance. By simulations, we verify our novel theoretical exact and approximate results and demonstrate significant performance improvement of our protocol, when compared to conventional transmission protocol with ground relaying and UAV-based transmission protocol without exploiting destination jamming. Finally, we evaluate the impacts of various system parameters, specifically, find the optimal UAV placement on the proposed protocol in terms of the aforementioned secrecy metrics.